In Europe, as elsewhere, the eighteenth century was a period of innovation and profound cultural transformation. The years between the 1690s and the French Revolution of 1789 saw the emergence of new styles and genres in painting and new ways of making, exhibiting, and understanding art. The course focuses on painting, sculpture, printmaking, and decorative arts in Britain and France. But we also examine art in Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Northern Europe, and we study the eighteenth-century interior in some depth, emphasizing its social function as a context for cultural display and its role within a nexus of increasing global trade, exploration, and exploitation.